


Bramble Rose Bloomery

by ClassicallyInclined



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/F, Flowers, Immortality, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Paganism, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassicallyInclined/pseuds/ClassicallyInclined
Summary: Camilla is an immortal witch who previously was a high priestess in one of the lesser known cults of Aphrodite. She’s come to Hampden town to set up a flower shop, sacrifice a man or two, and profit.
Relationships: Camilla Macaulay/Judy Poovey, Francis Abernathy/Richard Papen
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Bramble Rose Bloomery

Hampden College. Present Day.

It’s midwinter: snow and ice grip the branches of the birch trees; the pathways are sanded down and muddy. Hampden is desolate, pale, and silent.

Outside of Judy’s messy room—Rolls of fabric stacked all over the place, shoes kicked off haphazardly near the door, coats and loose papers scattered on the floor—there is a burst of loud shouting. Someone else, typically, is raising their voice, too. 

Groaning, Judy pulls herself out of her warm, little nest of pillows and blankets. Shoving her feet into her fluffy, pink slippers, she shuffles towards her door to go give the little punks a piece of her mind. Probably, some Freshman tweaked out. Seriously, waking her up on a Saturday, the day reserved for the languid silence which always follows a night of hard partying quintessential to the Hampden College experience. It’s really rude. Whoever they are, they’re assholes.

She steps out and then there is a thud. A ways down the hallway some meathead has slammed a scrawny boy against the wall. 

“Hey,” Judy says, advancing towards them, “Hey, what the fuck are you doing?”

The bigger one steps back and glances over at her. His eyes are bloodshot and his entire face is fairly red. A vein pulses on his damp forehead.  
“He’s been going after her,” he says. “He’s been going to see her. He’s trying to take her from me.”

The other boy, a twiggy, little thing wearing a fussy tweed blazer slides down the wall, slumping to the floor. It’s Richard, and he’s looking a bit peaky with his skin flushed and his eyes glazed over. He’s clinging to a bouquet of pink roses wrapped in thick, ivory paper.

“Richard.” Judy states unconvinced, raising a plucked eyebrow at this. 

The likelihood of Richard hitting on this dude’s girlfriend is pretty slim. He might have done it last term when he naively chased after all sorts of conventionally pretty, very attached, or otherwise safely unattainable girls; however, that sort of behavior had died down remarkably once he had started to spend more time with the other geeky weirdos in his classics class. 

Besides, she had seen him just a few days ago in the library with the redheaded one—Francis, she thinks— practically plastered together in a sloppy kiss, not that she’d mention it to this goon.

She scoffs at this. “Look, I think you’ve got the wrong Idea. I know Richard, and what you are saying is totally bogus.”

“It’s not,” he says. 

Richard looks up at Judy, eyes frosted over and wearing a dopey smile. Judy wonders at the sort of drugs he’s on right now; whatever they are, they seem pretty strong. He doesn’t look even remotely concerned with the hulking menace glowering at him.

“I’m in love, Judy. I think she loves me, too.”

“See. I told you,” says the mountain of a boy, lunging again at Richard. 

Judy grips his arm and tugs him away from Richard. “He’s just high, you idiot. Leave him alone. He’s clearly delirious.”

“He went to her shop. He’s trying to seduce her.” The guy is practically sobbing now, breath heaving in hysterical waves. Judy rolls her eyes.

“Look,” Judy says again. “Richard is my friend, and I won’t stand for you wailing on him in the hallway. I know it seems like—”

Behind her, Richard is beginning some tweaked out monologue about flowers and harsh beauty and parts of it slip into gibberish that might be Greek or Latin or whatever creepy dead language it is that he studies. “She’s a goddess, Judy. She’s ethereal. She’s poetry. Her skin is ambrosia. I love her.” 

He’s really not making this easy for her. She cracks her neck and squares up to the thug, staring him down with what is hopefully a really disdainful look.

“Richard is not going after your girlfriend or whatever. Go away before I have to go get security and get you suspended.” 

Then, she turns, pulls Richard up, and drags him to her room. He better be grateful: that guy was scary, and almost as big as Spike Rodney. She tells him as much, but he doesn’t seem to be listening, letting out little sighs of lovesick nonsense. He really reads too much bad poetry.

She gets him to sit on her bed, and keeps an eye on him while she picks up some of her sketches and magazines from the floor in case he decides to get sick. He’s quiet, and he keeps shoving his face into the bouquet and dreamily staring into space.

“So, Richard,” she begins, keeping her tone light, “what’s up with the flowers?” 

He traces one of the petals with his thumb. He might as well be in outer space.

“Richard.” She tries again.

He doesn’t look up.“Hmm?”

“The flowers. Where did you get them.”

Finally, this seems to drag him just slightly from his reverie. He glances up at her. 

“Aren’t they wonderful? I got them from Camilla.” He moves to sniff at them again, but Judy grabs at his wrist and presses them back down. He tilts his head back and curls his lips, frowning as though Judy had betrayed him, thrown his favourite book into a lake, cut up all of his fancy dress shirts and made him wear a t-shirt or something.

She snaps her fingers in front of him. “Focus, Richard. Have you taken anything?”

He shakes his head at her, looking put out. Then, he tries to duck his head down again, and she sighs Then she grips the bouquet and tears it away from him.

He paws pathetically at her arm, snarling. “Give them back.” 

She tosses them onto her desk and crosses her arms over her chest. This is really more trouble than it’s worth. She should have just let that punk beat up on him.

“Richard, I think someone roofied you or something.” She shushes him, pressing a manicured finger up to his lips. “Now, look, I need you to tell me what happened last night, or this morning, or whenever.”

He moans, collapsing backwards on her unmade bed. “Leave me alone, Judy.”

“Sorry, not going to happen.”

He mumbles something into her bedspread.

“What?”

“I went to get flowers. Last night, Francis told me he loves hyacinths. Its snowed too much. It’s cold, and there are no flowers.” Saying this seems to drag him into a sort of lucidity. His eyes gleam clear. “I just want him to be happy.” 

Judy nods. “Ok, Richard. Where did you go?”

Just as suddenly, the calmness that had settled over his frame is gone, torn out of him somehow. He twitches at the question, eyes flashing over to her desk and the roses. 

“Her shop is in Hampden,” Richard says quickly. “I love her, Judy. I’d do anything she’d ask of me. She’s divine. Exquisite. A diamond. Her name is Camilla. Even her name is beautiful. I love her.” He looks up at her, struck with a brilliant idea. “Judy, you have a car. Please, take me back to her. You must. I love her. I must have always. She’s all I can think about.”

Judy looks down at him. Who the hell is Camilla? And how could she do this to poor Richard? More importantly, how dare she? Judy doesn’t particularly care for all of his hobbies, and sometimes she wishes he’d get out there more and socialize with the rest of them, but Richard’s been happy in the boys club of the classics class. He enjoys rotting his eyes with ancient prose, walking around in his stiff shirts and trousers, and trailing after Francis. How dare Camilla ruin this? This is just totally fucked up. 

“Ok, Richard,” She says. “Let’s go see her. But we’ll need to make a quick stop. Does Francis still live in those apartments just off campus?”

Francis, is luckily there when she knocks on his door with Richard standing besides her impatiently.

He’d rasped non-stop about Camilla the whole way over, and was positively recalcitrant when Judy had made him get out of her car with her. 

“I don’t know where he lives, Richard.” She had told him. “I could get lost. It’ll be faster if you just show me.” Honestly, she was just worried that if she left him alone in the car he’d figure out how to hotwire it, or worse try to and trash her car in the attempt.

Francis raises his beaky nose at her when he opens the door halfway.“What are you doing here?” His voice is sharp, slightly Bostonian, very posh.

“Can we come in for a minute?” Judy asks.

Francis pokes his head out a bit further from the entryway, then, noticing Richard gestures them in with a quirk. 

Francis’ apartment is modern and seemingly at odds with his decor style: dark wooden furniture with elaborate baroque engravings, heavy velvet drapes strung up over the windows, countless rugs overlapping all over the shitty laminate floor and the shittier carpet in the living room. There is a cup of coffee on his table, and a plate with one or two eggs on it with a half eaten slice of toast hedged on the side. 

“Would you like any coffee, Richard?” Francis asks, ignoring her. He probably doesn't even know her name. He's wearing a silky dressing gown in a paisley print with shades of deep, wine-red and bright sapphire streaking through it. 

Richard doesn’t answer, lingers behind them on the little grey rug by the door. She has to do everything herself, doesn’t she? “He’ll have some coffee.” She says, and doubles back to drag him over to Francis’ table. 

Francis raises a brow at this. “What’s the matter with him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. He’s all fucked up. He thinks he’s in love with some girl.”

Richard, who had mostly stayed quiet up until this point, throws a scathing look in Judy’s direction. “But I am in love.”

“Yes. You’ve told me. At least a dozen times already.”

Francis’ face twists up into an odd combination of concern and fond bemusement. “You say Richards in love, in love with some girl?”

“Yeah.” 

Francis laughs.

“Look,” Judy starts. “This is really serious. I think she might have drugged him or something. He’s been out of his mind all morning. I need you to watch him. I’m going to go make her tell me what exactly it was she gave him.”

Francis waves his hand at this. “Of course. I would love to watch Richard for a while.” He says to her expressionless, but then turns to Richard, a smile shifting across his face. “You know, Richard, you could always just ask to come over. I wouldn’t mind. Though, I suppose I am flattered that you would put in such elaborate effort to see me.”

Richard’s eyes are all bugged out, distant, unseeing.

Judy sighs. “Just keep an eye on him, please. Don’t let him leave your apartment."

Francis curtly nods to her, and his smile still creeps up higher and higher on his face. He’s definitely not getting it. 

“I’ll make sure to keep him busy.” 

Judy speeds to Hampden town. She barely ever comes here, and as far as she can recall, no flower shop has ever inhabited the place.

Hampden is a small town, one you could just breeze by: there’s one little grocery, a liquor store, and a decrepit bank that’s out of business. But that makes any changes all the more notable.

It’s tucked into a commercial center—all dreary, mostly abandoned with windows boarded up. There is a law office in one of them with a bleak sign in the window that states: “HAVE YOU BEEN SUFFERING? YOU COULD BE ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION.” 

The flower shop looks totally out of place. Rather than the muted beige of the rest of the building, its exterior is painted in a crisp, blinding white. A sign above the entryway declares that the place is called: Bramble Rose Bloomery. There are two wide windows jolting out besides the door; though, with the way the sun is hitting the storefront, it makes it hard to see inside. Judy squints from her parked car, grabs her purse, and goes to investigate the place.

The very moment she opens the door, the smell of the place hits her: a brush of wysteria, a tangle of jasmine and gardenia, the quiver of lavender, the rush from sugary carnations, a hint of honeysuckle, and overwhelmingly, the heady, disorienting scent of roses that saturates the air.

A bell tingles, silvery and light. Judy steps inside and glances around. The shop is small, cramped with the flowers and their greenery. The floors are polished, white concrete. A small antique register is pressed up next to the door, though no one stands behind it. From what Judy can tell, no one is here. A shimmery curtain shifts lazily from the back. 

“Hello?” 

The curtain ruffles. A kind voice, the sort of voice that seems gentle and delicate and sweet, dances out, “I’ll just be a moment.” 

Then a hand is pulling the fabric out of the way, and Judy’s eyes go wide. The woman who steps out isn’t particularly tall but still startling. Her eyes are bright like oxidized mercury, gleaming in a way that is nearly painful. She’s pale with hair the color of burning sunlight in the height of summer. She’s wearing an incredible dress: a sheer, ivory thing that slides around her in odd folds, like something from another time.

“Oh,” she says, with a sort of delight, looking at Judy like she’s the rarity. 

Judy takes in a shaky breath. This whole place is joltingly strange with all of the bursts of color against the stores icy emptiness. It feels like something out of an experimental film or a dream half-remembered. The smell of roses is suffocating her, coating her throat, filling her lungs with intoxicating softness. 

“How charming you are,” the woman says. Her English is strange, stilted; an unusual accent is twined around each word. She practically glides towards Judy, moving nimbly around the clutter of the shop until she stands in front of her. The sunlight wraps her up in a golden glow.

Judy stares at her dumbly. What had she come here to say? It had been important, she thinks. But then the woman is touching the back of her hand; and everything is fine; and Judy is feeling warm, heated up from the inside like she’d just taken a few shots of vodka.

“Shall we choose some flowers for you then, dear?” She says, less of a question and more of a prompt. 

She leads Judy towards the back of the store, towards racks of flowers, each delicately blooming, equally perfect. Judy stumbles after her, eyes latched onto the back of her pale neck.

Camilla’s hands strike forwards, selecting each one without much of any hesitation. Her breath seems to ghost over Judy’s shoulders, honeyed, oddly floral. Her arms are covered in fair blonde hair. She radiates heat.

She brings every rose to Judy’s face, sometimes saying with delight “Oh, and you must smell this one.” Or: “This one is heavenly, one of my favorites.” 

Judy inhales each one, their scents complex and sweet. They make her feel like she’s been twirling around for hours, giddy, singing till her throat is raw.

Then just as briskly she—Camilla, she thinks, though she can’t recall when she heard it—is guiding Judy to the registrar, wrapping the flowers in a creamy paper, and handing them to her. Judy fumbles with the clutch of her purse; her fingers, usually so deft, have become clumsy, awkward. 

Camilla shakes her head, curls swaying, laughter bubbling out. “They are a gift. They could belong to no other.” 

Judy drives all the way back to school with the top down in her car feeling frothy, like the air is carbonated, like the frigid winter winds have transformed into comforting tropical breezes. 

Camilla, she thinks. Camilla. Camilla. Camilla. How could she have ever lived without her? Camilla was clearly woven into the world, stitched into every flower, sunny day, or moment of happiness.

Judy trudges nearly half-way back to her dorm when a snowball hits the back of her head. 

It’s cold.

It’s really cold. Her fingers are numb.

How had she left her coat in the car?

She palms the spot; bits of ice are caught in strands of her hair, melting against the nape of her neck. She turns around and glares at the freshman who’s belting out a laugh. What a jerk, she thinks. 

Then she happens to glance down. Her hand is tightly gripping a bouquet of thirteen pale roses: ivory, fragile pink, hints of peach. Their sickly smell wafts up in a sugary wave. 

Judy drops them on the path, steps backward, eyes growing wide, mouth gaping.

Judy sits up that night chain-smoking, sketching costume ideas, and drafting one of her historical fashion essays. When she finishes that, she sits by her window and stares up at the stars and the moon, hands shaking as she draws the cigarette from her lips to crush it out on her ashtray. 

It becomes a habit over the next few weeks, lying in bed for a while and getting perhaps an hour or two of restless sleep. But then, when she is finally drifting off, her mind dropping into that fuzzy space between dream and reality she catches a waft of rose in the air and she’ll shoot up: heart racing, hair a mess, eyes spinning wildly and latching onto a shadow or a beam of moonlight on her floor. Then, unable to even fathom sleeping, she sits and falls into an embarrassing routine of comforting activities. 

One night, irritated, she cleans her room frantically, wipes at her desk and her floors, picks up the loose sheets of paper and crams them into a loose manilla file folder, washes her sheets, picks up her clothes. 

It’s only when she kneels down beside her bed to scrape out whatever might have been brushed under it that she finds it: Innocuous, taunting, pristine pink, velvety between her fingers, perfumed with the same euphoric scent that the others had possessed—a single rose petal. It hasn’t wilted at all. Judy holds it up to the light, examines the way that it shimmers iridescent and almost glows. 

She doesn’t know much about flowers, but she has an idea that this is impossible. It’s not bruised, not wilted or dried; it could have been plucked only a moment ago. She throws it away, determined to forget about it, but the following days prevent the attempt entirely. 

The dorms have become some sort of hothouse for the flowers. Everyone seems to have discovered the shop. Jud wanders around with a leia around his neck. The hippies have taken to weaving flower crowns and proclaiming Camilla as a goddess come to earth, essentially starting a cult. They all gather in the lawn, chanting shit and passing out flowers. Bunny Corcoran is seen hugging a dozen bouquets to his chest—some which might have been stolen—and wandering the halls declaring Camilla the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Marion, his girlfriend, broke into tears at the sight of this, and then later angrily broke up with him in the middle of the quad.

Hampden, which truthfully has always been prone to passionate asides and unusual behavior, has spiraled into a sort of floral ecstasy.

The only one who seems to have retained any sense is surprisingly Richard. Possibly, the early inoculation had made him resistant to the widespread mania. Though, Judy suspects it might have something to do with the way that Francis has attached himself to him. 

Bizarre behavior of Hampden’s impressionable student body aside, the real issue is that Judy can hardly even step out of her room anymore without slipping on misplaced petals, tripping around terracotta pots housing gloriously tall orchids, or choking on the perfumy sort of odor that lingers in every building. 

More notably: Cloke Rayburn has stopped dealing drugs; there hasn’t been a party in weeks; and the lax amount of work normally required by her easy going professors has been dropped altogether—she catches one of them gnawing on a bouquet of lotus flowers backstage when she goes to check that none of her costumes have been filched by the hippies. (While not wildly out of character for the professor, who advocated for all sorts of odd activities to fully inhabit a theatrical role, it remained one of the more disturbing things she’d seen.)

Of course, it’s just when all of this is happening, the utter madness of the campus thriving, Bunny Corcoron goes missing. 

It’s a bright morning and the sunlight jolts off of the snow in sharp lines. Judy is locked in her room with candles burning in a feeble attempt to block out the incessant vapors that creep under her doorway. The only ones that work reek of leather, cedar, musk; they give Judy a headache.

There are three hurried raps on the solid wooden door. Judy, who for the last hour has distracted herself with complicated yoga positions, startles and collapses from an awkward sort of handstand where her feet are arched into the sky—mostly it's all sheer will, a single hand grounding her to the floor, and a noticeable tremble.

Judy scowls. She had just started to get the hang of that pose.

“What do you want?” she asks, snapping the door open. The gush of air from the corridor is heavenly sweet.

Richard, Francis, and a watery eyed Marion look towards her with a disturbing amount of hopefulness. 

Richard is wearing a rumpled shirt with the top few buttons undone; his hair is a bit messier than usual, and when he shifts, a few plum-colored marks are exposed. Besides him, Francis offers her a snobbish smile—a little slant of the lips that speaks more of basic recognition than actual appreciation. He’d been irritatingly polite to her after she’d thrown Richard into his den of antiquities and carpets. 

“Hello, Judy.” Francis says. 

“Hi.” Judy says. “What do you want?”

Marion in her tidy skirt, cashmere sweater with pearly buttons, and prim blouse, starts to cry again, dabbing at her eyes with a white handkerchief. Her face is a blotchy vermillion. Judy resists the urge to shut the door and return back to the artificial peace she’d constructed. Why does she always manage to drag herself into other people’s problems? Honestly, she should just transfer to some state university back in California. But, she can’t bring herself to; they’re all a bunch of morons. They’d get themselves killed without her. Damn it.

Judy sighs. “Fine. Fine. Get in here. You’re letting all of that air in. It’ll make me sick. I can’t think in it.“

They shuffle in, standing in an awkward little cluster. Richard coughs a bit, eyes drifting over to stare at the mountain of candles burning on her desk and windowsill. 

“Judy, what exactly—”

“Don’t start on that.” She crosses her arms.

“Fine, it’s just—”

“Look, just tell me why you’re here. Something’s happened, right?”

Richard narrows his eyes at her, brows scrunching, a purposefully blank expression drawn up over his face. He’s doing this then, huh. There’s a twitchy glance towards Francis, whose fidgeting with the edge of one of his sleeves.

Judy rolls her eyes. “Why else would you be here?”

There’s a beat of silence.

“It’s Bunny.” Marion says. “Something has happened to him. Something terrible, I just know it.” Marion wrings her hands together as if to pray. “He’s been very strange these last few weeks. Running around. Talking about that awful girl. It’s not like him. He’s always been very sweet, devoted.”

Judy waves for her to continue. 

“I thought he’d stop after a while. But he didn’t. That’s when I broke up with him, you know. But there was no reaction. Nothing. He was all motes of light. Hollow. He didn’t feel like Bunny anymore.”

Judy nods sympathetically. “I’m really sorry, Marion.” 

“You don’t understand,” Marion says. “Bunny would never do that to me. He respects me too much. And I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s been driving back and forth to Hampden town almost constantly. He keeps bringing back all of these ugly flowers for no reason at all.”

“I know it’s been awful for you, Marion. But why are you here? What’s happened?”

“He’s gone into the woods,” Francis says, moving towards the window. Outside a group of hippies are spinning together and singing. They’re only wearing bedsheets.

Marion continues: “It’s been three days, already. I asked about it down at the police station. They wouldn’t help me. They think he’s just run off. Richard and Francis,” Marion says, voice cracking, “they said you could help.”

Judy looks over at Richard, who has decided to examine her opened costume portfolio with the dedicated gaze of a scholar. She glares at him. “Seriously, Richard,” she says. “You can’t just promise people these sort of things.”

“Oh, but you will help, won’t you, Judy.” Marion looks up at her with wide brown eyes, like some sort of delicate doe, all gentle and sad.

“Really, who do you think I am? Buffy? Nancy Drew? Look, I want to help, but all of this shit is totally out of my league.”

Marion looks like she might cry again, and Judy refuses to feel even a little bit guilty about it. (Of course, a flicker of something like regret might roll through her, but that’s clearly just nausea. Totally unrelated.)

Richard looks over at her all judgy, condescending, and mean.

“Judy, I’m not sure you’ve noticed it while you’ve been sitting up here breathing in all of this smoke, but everyone on campus, everyone that I’ve noticed anyways, there living like this is a dream. Barely anyone eats, there hasn’t been a party in weeks, and they’ve basically canceled all classes at this point.”

Francis nods at this. “Even Henry’s gotten foggy lately. He’s always been a bit off, but now he’s refusing to speak in anything other than Greek or Latin. He just keeps reciting poetry and staring off into space. I wouldn’t think anything of it if it was just Henry but…”

“Yes, and then that thing with Julian happened,” Richard says. Francis nods his head frantically, like his pointy chin is nailing in the point.

“Yes. Yes. He just got up one day during class—after Henry had started to recite all of these latin sonnets—his entire face went pale. He looked like a corpse. He mumbled something like an apology, and then he left. He didn’t even mention where he was going. I saw him just speeding out of the parking lot. We drove up to his house, and `all of his things were still there.”

“So what, do we, like, start a search party? I doubt we’ll cover much ground with the four of us.”

“It’s already been three days. It’s been freezing overnight. I’m not sure that he’s out there anymore.” This, Francis says with a gloomy sort of resignation. 

All of the flushed color seems to drain out of Marion’s cheeks, a steely glint sharpening madly in her eyes. “And we already know where this entire mess started.” 

“Do we?” Judy asks. “All of this is strange but there has to be a reasonable explanation: mass hysteria, drugs in the water, a psychiatric experiment. I saw this movie a few months ago, maybe...”


End file.
